PicksInSix Review: The Full Monty-Paramount Theatre

Paramount’s “Full Monty” Really Measures Up!
PicksInSix® Review | Ed Tracy

Do not fear. If you are looking for a big, bawdy, unabashed comic revival—with all the twists, turns and pelvic thrusts you can imagine—then Paramount Theatre’s “The Full Monty” is the show for you. Sure, it’s suggestive and saucy, but beyond the boisterousness, it’s a moving story about building self-esteem through dedication, hard work and the support of friends and family. Adapted for the stage by Terrence McNally with a lot of heart there are surprises galore to be found in the music and lyrics by David Yazbek. Add in a terrific cast and you’ve got a winner from top to bottom!

Based on the 1997 hit film about six out-of-work steel workers who decide to bare it all at a local nightclub to pay the bills, the ten-time Tony Award nominated 2000 Broadway musical was reset to middle class America in Buffalo, New York. Jerry Lukowski (Ben Mayne) is struggling to maintain a relationship with his son Nathan (a split role for Will Daly and Ellis Myers) and stuck trying to catch up with child support payments to his wife Pam (Rebecca Hurd) during their divorce. Jerry and his buddy Dave Bukatinsky (Jared David Michael Grant), who is under similar pressure from his wife Georgie (Veronica Garza) to take a security job to tide things over, decide to hatch a plan to make a bundle at a one-night-only strip show at Tony Girodano’s club.

The two first recruit the depressed and despondent Malcom MacGregor (Adam Fane) and then turn to Harold Nichols (Jackson Evans), a former plant supervisor-turned-dance-instructor to help them put the act together. The men then team up with Jeanette Burmeister (Liz Pazik), an adorably salty rehearsal pianist for auditions. Busting out of the pack at auditions Noah “Horse” T. Simmons (Bernard Dotson) and Ethan Girard (Diego Vazquez Gomez) round out the somewhat dubious, but committed, sextet who hilariously transform into “Hot Metal” before the night is done.

At every turn, Director Jim Corti with choreographer Tor Campbell meticulously move the men from initial awkwardness and insecurity forward. It all plays out against scenic designer Michelle Lilly’s brilliant skyline of Buffalo, framed by a massive, multi-story urban landscape that morphs effortlessly from night club to rehearsal hall where the men perfect their dance steps often in uncontrolled unison when least expected.

Music director/conductor Kory Danielson and the orchestra are in exceptionally fine form with Yazbek’s first Broadway score that features the men in “Scrap,” “Michael Jordan’s Ball” and “Big Black Man” (featuring Dotson in a commanding performance), the women in “It’s a Woman’s World,” and the company in the rousing “The Goods.”  Pazik is a blast in “Jeanette’s Showbiz Number” while Mayne and Grant team up well for “Man” and are joined by Fane in the somewhat dark themed, but clever, “Big-Ass Rock.”

Among the quieter moments, Ann Delany “Life with Harold” is a delight. Mayne is superb in “Breeze Off the River” while Evans and Grant shine in the anthem “You Rule My World.”  The inspirational musical highlight of the night belongs to Fane for his soaring vocal in the hymn-like “You Walk with Me” with Gomez that helps pave the way for the showstopping finale “Let it Go” which is full of bright lights and “Hot Metal” enough for everyone.  

PHOTO|Liz Lauren

PARAMOUNT THEATRE
presents
THE FULL MONTY
The Broadway Musical
through October 6, 2024

23 East Galena Boulevard
Aurora, IL 60506

(630) 896–6666

WEBSITE

TICKETS

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PicksInSix® is a registered trademark of Roxbury Road Creative, LLC

PicksInSix Review: Little Shop of Horrors - Paramount Theatre

Boy Meets Girl Meets Bloodthirsty Plant.
PicksInSix® Review | Ed Tracy

There’s a little show about plant food and world domination that’s getting a big-stage theatrical revival at a theatre near you. The smash hit 1982 Off-Broadway musical “Little Shop of Horrors” featuring book and lyrics by Howard Ashman and music by Alan Menken is currently blooming nightly in a fast-paced and highly entertaining production directed by Landree Fleming at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora.

For the humble and lovable Seymour Krelborn (Jack Ball), being on Skid Row as a junior employee at Mushnik’s Flower Distributors is looking more and more like a dead-end job every day. It doesn’t help that the awkward and inept Seymour is hopelessly infatuated with his coworker, Audrey (Teressa LaGamba), who happens to be entangled with a sick, demented and abusive lover Orin (Russell Mernagh), the nitrous oxide addicted dentist from hell you love to hate.

The Mushnik flower shop is on a perennial bubble of its own. With his inventory shriveling and not one sale for the day, the dejected Mushnik (Gene Weygandt) is about to throw in his trowel and pull the door shades down for the final time. Grasping for a hopeful life-vine, Audrey urges Seymour to bring out his newest project, a fascinating and irresistible plant he has dutifully named “Audrey II” in honor of the woman of his dreams.

What starts out as fun-loving camp turns quickly to ghoulish satire with a succulent score and a top rate ensemble led by Ball and LaGamba as the unwitting marks for the charismatic, and inherently evil, foliage from another planet that has a taste for world domination and fresh hemoglobin. It’s Ball’s Seymour who is first enchanted into feeding his own fancy for fame and fortune until those closest to him begin to succumb to Audrey II’s insatiable erythrocytic appetite.

Along the way, Ashman and Menken’s brilliant collaboration shines in the capable hands of music director Kory Danielson who conducts the Paramount Band and choreography by Michael George and Mariah Morris. LaGamba’s lofty and poignant rendition of “Somewhere That’s Green” and the superb duet with Ball “Suddenly, Seymour” are particular highlights. Standout performances abound from the Urchins—Lydia Burke (Crystal), Tickwanya Jones (Ronnette) and Marta Bady (Chiffon)—who serve as the show’s Greek chorus, to Weygandt’s irascible turn as Mushnik in “Mushnik and Son.”

The magnificent multi-level Skid Row set is the work of Jeffrey D. Kimec. Add Jose Santiago’s crisp lighting and Yvonne Miranda’s evocative 60s era costumes and you have the perfect backdrop for the ever-present, and all-consuming, Audrey II—voiced by Je’Shaun Jackson and puppeteered by Adam Fane—designed and created by Skylight Music Theatre and the props team who are working overtime for this show and make Paramount’s “Little Shop of Horrors” a creeping-crawling hit that’s good to the last drop!     

PHOTO|Liz Lauren

Paramount Theatre
presents
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
through October 15, 2023

23 East Galena Boulevard
Aurora, IL 60506

(630) 896–6666

WEBSITE

TICKETS

HEALTH & SAFETY PROTOCALS

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PicksInSix® is a registered trademark of Roxbury Road Creative, LLC

PicksInSix Review: THE PRODUCERS Paramount Theatre

“GOOD LUCK! GOOD LUCK! GOOD LUCK!”

This much you probably already know, but it bears repeating: “The Producers,” Mel Brooks’ raucous, no-holds-barred musical send-up of the iconic 1967 film starring the immortal Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, hit Broadway like a tornado in 2001 after sold-out previews in Chicago. That production starred Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, and received 12 Tony Awards, including best actor in a musical for Lane (nominated with Broderick) and best director and choreography for Susan Stroman. I was in the St. James Theater for the first Broadway preview performance on March 21, 2001, and remember the experience like it was yesterday: walking up to the box office at curtain, snagging a single ticket and settling into the stage-left box high above the stage for one of the most stunning and electrifying evenings I ever had in a theater.

That memory loomed large until Saturday evening at Paramount Theatre, when an exuberant opening-night audience, eager to see just how a time capsule of musical comedy would play in its natural, large-scale habitat, was treated to a gorgeous, non-stop comic gem. The Jim Corti-directed blockbuster stars the enormously talented duo of Blake Hammond and Jake Morrissy as Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, who cook up a scheme to bilk wealthy widowers of their money so they can retire to Rio after their surefire flop crashes and burns. With all that is happening–and there is something special at every turn in the fast-paced, musical-comedy romp–Hammond and Morrissy own this show. Hammond’s opening exultation number, “The King of Broadway,” elevates the entire company, and his fervent solo turn, “Betrayed,” is a capstone moment of the night. Morrissy is a triple-threat talent whose comic range fits perfectly in the role of the meek accountant who finds confidence along the way, especially with Elyse Collier’s Ulla, whose amazing musical assets are in a full bloom all their own—especially in her big and boisterous number, “When You Got It, Flaunt It.”

As for the story, in an odd twist of fate, or rather, turn of a phrase, success is sealed in the cleverly framed lyrics of “It’s Bad Luck to Say Good Luck on Op’ning Night,” as Max, hoping for the worst, shouts, “Good Luck! Good Luck! Good Luck!”–the musical equivalent of referring to the “Scottish play” by its real name. In the end, the message is to follow your dream. For some that’s being a Broadway producer and lunch at Sardi’s every day. For others, it’s wearing a brat and grill headdress or singing, “Haben Sie gehört das deutsche Band?”

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Director Corti and choreographer Brenda Didier delightfully skewer the business of show at every opportunity, with a direct hit in the show’s big number, “Springtime for Hitler.” Sean Blake’s insanely over-the-top Roger DeBris, whose entourage includes the wistful Carmen Ghia (Adam Fane at his best) leading a band of minions in “Keep It Gay,” is perfect. Blake’s furor-raising turn in the musical-within-the-musical is inspired. And, you will marvel at Ron E. Rains’ manic Franz Liebkind, the Nazi sympathizer, playwright and pigeon-keeper extraordinaire.

“The Producers” boasts an impressive roster of more than 20 of Chicago’s brightest musical talents in multiple roles who all deserve mention here, including: Nathan Mittleman, Sawyer Smith, Jason Richards, Jenna Coker-Jones, Matt Casey, Sara Reinecke, Haley Jane Schafer, Erica Evans, Allyson Graves, Christopher Kelley, Miranda Borkan, Bethany Christine Elkin, Kaitlin Jempson, Bernell Lassai III, Ivory Leonard IV, Eben Logan, Jessica Palkovic, Brandon Pisano, Elena Rios, Anthony Sullivan Jr., Marco Tzunux and J Tyler Whitmer. 

The crisp and finely tuned 21-piece orchestra is conducted by Tom Vendafreddo, who also serves as music director. The impressive and colorful William Boles set design and ingenious Jordan Ross costumes–on full and glorious display in Morrissy’s brilliant “I Want to Be A Producer,” and the show-stopping, “Springtime for Hitler,”–are flat-out spectacular, as is the sound design by Adam Rosenthal, Jesse Klug’s lighting and projections by Mike Tutaj. Much more will leave you laughing in the aisles at the big, beautiful Paramount Theatre—but only until March 17th, so you should line up now or risk breaking a leg or two in the stampede to get into this one!    

PHOTOS|Liz Lauren

PARAMOUNT THEATRE
Presents
THE PRODUCERS
through March 17th
23 East Galena Boulevard, Aurora

WEBSITE
TICKETS
(630) 896-6666

For more reviews, visit: Theatre In Chicago

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